AKA BIRD NERD

West Cliff Drive
Santa Cruz, California
November 1, 2011

We got a real treat today. In two different locations we were able to watch the Humpbacks from shore. In this photo the whale was slapping his tail on the water. I’m pretty sure he was doing it to call other whales or to broadcast his location. Other whales came closer after this whale slapped his tail a few times.

You can see a few other whale photos on my Keep Santa Cruz Weird Blog .

The whales were feeding on anchovies. At the first location, (I didn’t take any photos) the birds were in a feeding frenzy as well as the whales. It was so exciting that I didn’t want to take the time to pull the gear out of the car. Dumb, huh? If you want to see a movie of what I was watching, go to youtube – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoP1N0OyFic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHOQSRPYQWw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=YTheyS1L-ho

This photo was taken with my Nikon D80, Tamron 200-500 zoom at 290mm, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/640 sec, tripod

Tags: Gallery, General by David Dilworth
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978
West Cliff Drive
Santa Cruz, California
November 1, 2011

Lately I’ve been increasing the size of my photos to 800 by 600. Be sure to click on the photo to see the larger view. My blog template can only handle 450 x 338 horizontal photos and 640 x 480 vertical photos. That doesn’t mean that a simple click won’t give you a much larger uploaded photo. It is especially important in photos like these two where you have several species in a group shot. If you get a photo that is 640 x 480 horizontal after clicking on the smaller view, it is because the photo wasn’t good enough in quality to make it 800 x 600. The smaller you make a photo the sharper it appears.

I challenge you to identify all the birds in these two photos.

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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977
West Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz, California
November 1, 2011

Here is a series of four photos of this beautiful bird. The contrast between the black body, bright red/orange bill and yellow/red eye is often hard to capture for some reason. These aren’t great photos, but they were fun to take. The birds in the foreground are Whimbrels. These birds were doing different things. Some were just resting, possibly in a middle of some migration. Maybe they’re here all year. Since I’m not here throughout the entire year, I just don’t know.

It appears that I had a love affair this rotation with pelicans and oystercatchers. I had a lot more opportunities than usual, because I made it a habit of visiting Santa Cruz in the spring and rarely in summer. During those times I didn’t see hardly any oystercatchers and the pelicans were not around in abundance. I say rotation because, now that I’m retired, I’ll be in Santa Cruz in the fall and spring for months at a time.

Nikon D80, Tamron 200-500 zoom at 500mm, ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/200 sec, tripod

The bird’s foot is blurry, but generally a good side view of this bird.

These birds, when not napping, would find food in the pools of water on the rocks. The waves would sometimes come up so far over the rock that the birds would go airborne for a moment before feeding in the pools of water again. So, those who were napping tended to do it with one eye open sort of speak.

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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976
West Cliff Drive
Santa Cruz, CA
November 1, 2011

I don’t remember seeing this bird before, but Shawn says I have. If that’s true, this is not a lifer sighting for me. However, it is my first Surfbird photograph series.

Nikon D80, Tamron 200-500 zoom at 500 mm, ISO 200, f/6.3, 1/640 sec, tripod

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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975
Santa Cruz, California
October 28, 2011

Here is a second set of 3 photos taken in the area next to our cottage. Again, I was hand holding the camera.

Nikon D80, Tamron 200-500 zoom at 410 mm, ISO 200, f/6.0, 1/1250 sec, hand held

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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974
Santa Cruz, California
October 28, 2011

Here is the first set of 3 photos of this species taken right next to our cottage in Santa Cruz. One of the neighbors had grown some sunflower plants, and no doubt, this attracted a couple of these birds. I was hand holding my 200-500 lens, which I don’t normally do because it is hard for me to keep steady without a tripod. Wish this lens had image stabilization control. So, the photos are not as crisp as they could have been.

Nikon D80, Tamron 200-500 zoom at 410 mm, ISO 200, f/6.0, 1/250 sec, hand held

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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973
Moss Landing State Beach
California
October 14, 2011

Several postings back, click here , I mentioned that I would look to see if I tried to digiscope any of these Avocets. I did. The earlier photos were at 500mm. Here are 4 digiscoped photos. Now, before I get going here, I want to mention that these birds were a very long distance away. I also want to say that it was a warm day, so heat waves distort long distance photos. Here is a technique I use in order to try to get photos like this to be half-way useable.

I was using a Nikon P4 camera mounted on a Nikon Fieldscope 82mm ED, 30x wide angle eyepiece, tripod – ISO 50, f/5.3, 1/160 sec.

The zoom on the P4 was maxed out as well. The results of a photo at this distance and in these conditions will be very soft (blurry). The first thing I do is crop as large as I can and then reduce the size of the photo to 640 x 480 (landscape view reduced to 450 x 338 on blog – click to get a little larger). A photo this small will sharpen up quite a bit, but I still hit it with one or two sharpens in Photoshop. If I have to use two I’m going to get quite a bit of noise. I can leave the noise or I can use a plugin like Imagenomic to reduce noise. Sometimes I can sharpen the bird and then de-noise just the background. I use the lasso tool to select the bird and then inverse it so everything but the bird will be affected by the de-noising plugin.  If I have to de-noise the entire photo the bird will loose detail and look abnormally smooth.

The first photo was hit by 1 sharpen and no de-noising. The second photo was sharpened twice and then the entire photo was de-noised.

No de-noising

De-noised with Imagenomic plugin in Photoshop

The first two photos are the best. When I tried to zoom in more on an individual bird, it was just too much for the camera and Photoshop to deal with. The goal is to take a photo that needs little to no processing in color, sharpness, lighting and cropping. And, you can’t make apples into oranges. The original photo has to have enough useable components to allow Photoshop to tweak it. Photos like these will never be printable, but they can be useful in small sizes on websites.

I know there are some photographers out there that feel this is cheating. But I’m not a professional, I do this for fun, my equipment is not high end, and taking photos of birds is a lot more challenging than taking a landscape photo or portrait of your grandma. I can use all the help I can get.

Tags: Bird Photo, Gallery by David Dilworth
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Photo By Shawn Weigelt
November 10, 2011
Sequim, Washington

Let’s face it…most people aren’t all that interested in gulls.  To them it’s, “just a seagull.”  If one actually takes the time to look at them, however, they’ll find that there’s a lot of different species of gulls and a myriad of sizes and color patterns.  Properly identifying gulls is a real challenge for even very experienced birders and I am certainly no exception.  Throw in frequent hybridization from species to species and now you have a REAL problem.  So…whenever I get an opportunity to get good identification photos of gulls you will see them on this blog.

This profile photo is a good study of an adult Western Gull.  Important field marks to take note of include: the pink colored gape (at the corner of the mouth), very light head markings for an adult bird in non-breeding plumage, and the orange-yellow colored orbital ring and dark colored iris (iris color indicative of the Northern form of the species.  Southern birds have a lighter colored iris).

Nikon D80 70-300VR at 300mm, 1/60sec, ISO 200, f/5.6, hand held

Tags: Bird Photo, Weigelt Photos by Shawn Weigelt
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Photo By Shawn Weigelt
November 13, 2011
Sequim, Washington

This isn’t a fabulously sharp or exciting photo, but I don’t often get any usable shots of this species so you’ll have to live with it!  This young female harrier was perched near the side of the road only a few tenths of a mile from our home in Sequim.  I couldn’t resist stopping for a few shots and this one was the best I could come up with.

Nikon D80 70-300VR at 300mm, 1/320sec, ISO 200, f/5.6, hand held

Tags: Bird Photo, Weigelt Photos by Shawn Weigelt
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Photo By Shawn Weigelt
November 10, 2011
Theler Wetlands, Belfair, Washington

I thought this one came out halfway decent though the fiber or hair on the bill is a bit distracting.  The afternoon lighting was great and the background produced some nice warm colors.

Nikon D80 70-300VR at 300mm, 1/160sec, ISO 125, f/5.6, hand held

Tags: Bird Photo, Weigelt Photos by Shawn Weigelt
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